Mark Tremonti On His Multiple Musical Identities

"Sometimes there's just never enough time for everything," Mark Tremonti guitarist/songwriter for Alter Bridge and Creed (when not on hiatus), and founder/frontman of Tremonti admits. "But we do our best to make sure that we keep giving each record the proper treatment as far as touring and promotion."

Tremonti's latest release, Dust, was recorded at the same time as its predecessor, last year's Cauterize, and the prolific artist explains, "I just wanted to record as many songs as possible while I had Elvis' [Michael Baskette] time, our producer. We put together about 25 songs and I picked the best, uh, 20 to record and we went with those... I know I'll never have enough time to get everything I've written recorded so, when I do have recording sessions, I make the most of them."

 "One day my friend at school told me he would sell me his guitar for ten bucks so I bought my first guitar."

On how the material was split into two albums, Tremonti shares, "Once we started mixing the album, that's when I really started making tracklistings, split the songs up as equally as possible." While trying to make each album "as balanced as possible", Tremonti illustrates, "It's kinda like picking sports teams. Each record got its first choice and then second choice; so I picked the best song for the first record and then second best for the second record, and so on."

When asked whether different guitar playing styles are required for Alter Bridge and Tremonti, the guitarist offers, "Tremonti stuff is much more, kind of, heavy metal-driven so it's more aggressive on the rhythm side of things... I actually find the guitar playing in Tremonti probably easier than stuff in Alter Bridge, because there's more space in some of the Alter Bridge songs and Tremonti stuff has so much going on at all times; it kind of makes things easier for me, for some reason." Tremonti also sings for his solo project and says when he added his voice to the mix, "It just seemed kind of natural".

In his quest to "be as legit as possible", Tremonti reveals , "I do my best to put the songs together with my parts in mind so, when it comes time to do them onstage, I'm fully capable, you know? I don't like to record things that I can't perform live." 

When he was growing up, Tremonti's favourite bands were "speed metal bands". After pestering his parents to buy him a guitar for Christmas "for a few years", Tremonti realised "it'd just never happen". "So one day my friend at school told me he would sell me his guitar for ten bucks so I bought my first guitar." What about his first amp? "I went up to my local pawn shop and I got one for, uh, I think 40 [US] dollars. And it was a terrible, terrible, terrible guitar amplifier. But I made it work." When asked how his parents felt about him bringing home an amp, Tremonti laughs, "It wasn't even loud enough for it to disturb them."

Some of the first songs Tremonti learned on guitar were by Slayer, Metallica and Testament. "Most of it wasn't the lead guitar playing it was more of the riffing and the rhythm stuff so, yeah! That's why I love doing the solo project, 'cause this is the first band where I really get to use that style of playing."